Adding / Managing network (IP) cameras

This section covers adding and managing analog cameras. A Bluecherry hardware compression card is required for use with analog cameras and our software.

Select Devices from the menu

By default the ‘IP Cameras’ section is minimized, click on the ticket will expand the view.

All IP cameras will be displayed in this section. To add a new network / IP camera, simply click ‘Add an IP camera’

Select manufacturer

The first step is to select a manufacturer. If your camera isn’t listed then click here to read about adding a Generic camera

Select the camera manufacturer model

For ease of use we try to keep current with each manufacturers camera models. As you can imagine, this is a daunting task. If your camera isn’t in the list, try a model close to it. If you need help, post a problem on community.bluecherrydvr.com and we will help you.

Adding an IP camera

Camera name – This is your descriptive title for the name or location of the camera. This will show up in Bluecherry logs and in the client / web interface, so make sure it is descriptive enough to know what it is from a list of cameras.

Camera IP or Host – The IP or hostname of the camera. It is recommended that you login to the IP camera and give it a static IP address.

Username – The username that you use to login to the camera

Password – The password that you use to login to the camera

Advanced settings – This allows you to view and change RTSP path settings and port numbers

From the advanced settings you can change the Path to RTSP and MJPEG, along with the MJPEG and RTSP port. If we have the wrong RTSP path for a camera model, please let us know so we can update our records.

Motion detection settings

Select ‘Motion detection settings’ from the ‘Settings’ menu

The motion detection section can be broken down into three parts

Pre-event and post event buffers – Each camera can be individually set to have its own pre-event and post-event buffer. This value is measured in seconds, and allows for pre and post event recording to be added automatically once a motion event occurs.

Sensitivity settings – Each location on the grid above can be changed to a different value. The supported values are off (no motion detected in this grid), minimal, low, average, high and very high. # Selecting a ‘low’ sensitivity setting would mean that more motion would need to occur in that selected grid location to ‘trip’ the motion detection recording. Selecting ‘very high’ would change the sensitivity value so very little movement would need to occur in that grid to ‘trip’ the motion detection recording.

Grid selection – As mentioned above, each location on the grid can be changed to different values. Simply select the type of sensitivity you want from the levels above, then click on the grid. You can also hide the image to better set the grid locations if the image from the camera is too bright.

*Note: Changes are not made until you click ‘Save changes’.

Settings -> Schedule

By default each camera uses the ‘Global schedule’ (see #1 on the image above). However it is possible to use a different schedule for each device. To enable this, click the ‘Use device-specific schedule for this camera’ and click ‘Save changes’

Device-specific schedules

From this section you can select which hours on which days you want certain recording to occur. In this example motion will be detected on Monday – Friday between 5 AM and 2 PM.

Setting the schedule to ‘Continuous’ will record for the entire duration. Every 15 minutes a new video file will be started.Setting the schedule to ‘Motion’ will recording motion for the duration of the motion event, plus the pre and post event times (if selected)Setting the schedule to ‘Off’ will disable any recording from occuring during the selected time.

Settings -> PTZ settings

Select PTZ camera manufacturer

We provide several existing PTZ configurations for various IP cameras. Simply select the manufacturer from the list and then click ‘All devices’ to go back to the previous screen

If a manufacturer is not in this list, then you can create your own custom PTZ commands by clicking ‘Create a custom set of PTZ commands’